Historic Amarillo hotel's renovation halted after company files bankruptcy

The fate of the historic Herring Hotel in downtown Amarillo is in limbo once again, as the current company that owns the building filed for bankruptcy this month, according to court documents obtained Thursday.

The Herring Hotel Development Company, LLC, initially filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on March 5. This comes after the company purchased it in 2021, with hopes of pouring $33.5 million into the building that has been empty for decades.

A public foreclosure sale had been announced in November and again for March 5, according to the Potter County public records website, noting a deed of trust between Gulf Capital Lending, LLC and the Herring Hotel Development Company, LLC was recorded Oct. 20, 2021 for $1.875 million.

What is Chapter 7 bankruptcy?

Chapter 7 bankruptcy has a trustee collect and sell the debtor's nonexempt assests, and the proceeds of those assest sales will go to claims holders or creditors, according to uscourts.gov. This differs from Chapter 13 bankruptcy, where the filer would need to make a repayment plan.

Promised renovations, tax holdups, and more have made the century-old Herring Hotel an endangered piece of history

In the early 1920s, construction on the 164-feet tall, $1.2 million Herring Hotel was completed at 311 S.E. Third Ave. With 13 floors aboveground and 600 rooms, the graceful red brick hotel opened its doors under the ownership of Cornelius Taylor Herring on Dec. 15, 1926. A grand opening celebration was held on New Year's Day in 1927.

Herring was a cattleman, oilman and a banker, who also owned 98,000 acres of the LS Ranch north of Amarillo, according to preservationtexas.org.

The Kansas City architectural firm Shepard and Wiser designed the Herring Hotel, which became the fourth largest in Texas at the time, according to a drafted report to the National Register of Historic Places.

The hotel was known for Old Tascosa, a restaurant and club, which opened in 1942. One of the highlights of the Old Tascosa was the 11 H.D. Bugbee murals. Two reportedly remain intact, according to a 2022 report.

The nightclub in the basement was designed by Amarillo architect Guy Carlander with an “Old West/Ranch House” theme, according to Michael Grauer, historian and McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture/Curator of Cowboy Collections & Western Art at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. "The Old Tascosa had pine paneling, red Naugahyde upholstery on the booths and chairs, neon cattle brands from area ranches (LX, XIT, T Anchor, etc.), with a bandstand on the east side and a dance floor," Grauer said in an email. "Above the booths were murals by Mr. Bugbee. All the murals except two are gone. This was caused by the flooding in 1989 but mainly by all but two of those murals, The Hitching Rail and 'Buffalo family' being painted over."

The Herring Hotel was one of three oil boom era hotels, and is the only one remaining, though it is listed as one of Texas' most endangered places by Preservation Texas.

The hotel's occupancy started to decline in the 1960s, leading the Herring Hotel Corporation to file for bankruptcy in 1965. Morris Steinbaum of California purchased it in 1967, and the hotel remained open until 1969.

Around 1969, the hotel had new ownership. Renovations, estimated at $1.5 million, were made to the top eight floors, and offices were leased to the federal government. It was abandoned by the late 1970s.

According to Globe-News archives, Robert Goodrich, a retired college professor, bought the vacant building in 1989 to preserve a piece of Amarillo history and sought to bring it back to life. Decades later, Goodrich sold the building after efforts to restore this historic building were unsuccessful.

In 2012, then owners Robert and Leticia Goodrich were working with Austin developer Bob Gallup to begin a $35.5 million renovation, but those plans fell through, according to Globe-News archives. In the 2012 article, the Goodrich family had requested property tax rebates and had hoped to turn the hotel into a mix of hotel rooms, apartments and retail space. The project would have created as many as 180 hotel rooms and 33 apartments, according to prior coverage. No action was taken when the request was revisited in 2015.

July 2012: Group presents plans for Herring Hotel

For one public event, the hotel opened its doors for the first time in 60 years to host the annual Herring Holiday Ball fundraiser, starting in December 2015 through around December 2019 in the hotel's lobby.

A drafted recommendation, dated in 2022, for the National Register of Historic Places, described the building's exterior and interior. There were renovations done on the 6-13th floors in 1969 to convert the hotel rooms into open office spaces. Despite that, the draft stated the rest of the "building’s central core has been retained."

"The first floor’s main lobby is intact and features a cast stone fountain, fluted columns, decorative plaster, and marble floors," the report stated. "The second floor/mezzanine level retains most of its circulation patterns and room arrangements, with the mezzanine, ballroom, kitchen, and several of the sample rooms intact. The third through fifth floors retain the historic circulation patterns and hotel room arrangements as well as plaster walls, ceilings, and stained wood doors and transoms."

2022 draft for historic registration: Herring Hotel

The Herring Hotel Development Company, LLC, purchased the building in 2021. This bankruptcy leaves the hotel's future unclear, and the doors shut.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Amarillo's Herring Hotel restoration in limbo with company bankruptcy